Thursday, June 01, 2006

Comparing apples to orchards

In attempts to curtail how quickly the general public is throwing their support away from the war, the NeoCons and their talking heads have decided to take an entirely new tactic. Let's point out just how much safer Iraq (a country) is than Washington, D.C. (a city).

When you look at the rates of violent deaths for those two areas, yes, techinically Iraq would be safer, clocking in at 27.51 civilian deaths per 100,000, compared to DC's 35.8. But, as mentioned, these figures, while valid, do not compare with each other, simply due to the scope. Looking just at national capitals, Baghdad ranks at 95 per 100,000. Suddenly the comparison doesn't look so good. If we go nation-vs-nation, then the U.S. sits with 5.5, and again, the NeoCon rhetoric doesn't look quite so good.

But we don't want to poke too large of a hole into their theory, so we'll leave it at nation-vs-capital. But let's take a moment to include the soldiers in Iraq, who are not Iraqi citizens. If you count their deaths, that brings the violent death rate in Iraq up to somewhere in the vicinity of 128 per 100,000.

In other words, no, Iraq is by no means safer than Washington D.C., or anywhere else in the nation. However, this is the message that is currently being pumped out. And, even more frightening, this is the message that people are going to mindlessly believe, the same way that they've believed just about everything else espoused by Rush and his cronies.

Even when they contradict themselves.

1 comment:

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